The West Coast Eagles produced a competitive and honourable performance on the weekend, falling to Collingwood by just 10 points in front of 90,000 Pies fans at the MCG.

Eagles forward Jake Waterman praised his young teammates and coaches for the hard work and preparation in the lead up to the round 11 clash.

“I think we produced a real mature performance,” Waterman said.

“That was the biggest crowd I’ve played in front of, you don’t usually get those crowds unless you’re playing in finals.

“I think the way we handled it, and the way we handled ourselves throughout the game, I tip my hat the young boys especially, the way they went about it.

“They didn’t step back from the challenge, they stepped in and they weren’t overwhelmed by anything that was going on, so I thought we played a really good brand of footy, and we could have easily won that game.

“Hats off to the coaches, the way they prepared us to play and to put ourselves in that sort of environment, and credit to the boys and the leaders and everyone out there for playing their role.”

While the Eagles’ 2024 Leading Goal Kicker has struggled with accuracy in front of goals at times this season, the 28-year-old said he’s looking to get back to basics and will continue to learn and grow.

“When you’re on, you’re on with some of these things, and when you’re off, you’re off,” Waterman said.

“Even when you’re striking the ball well, and you’re kicking them well, you tend to miss some, and that’s the position I’ve found myself in a little bit at the moment.

“It’s a little bit of a confidence thing, it all is with your set shots because you take a mark inside 50 and you’ve got 30 second to yourself to process it.

“Sometimes you can spend a bit too much time thinking about what you’ve got to do instead of just going through your processes.

“And that’s what I’m trying do, just trying to do the things that have held me in good stead my whole career, keep my head over the ball, use good momentum and try to get my ball drop confident again.

“It’s sort of the first time that I’ve ever really experienced it, and I’m 28 now, so it’s just funny how the game of footy can humble you like that, but you’ve just got to continue to be open to learning and changing.”

The Eagles return to Optus Stadium this week to take on the Bombers, and after parting ways with senior coach Brad Scott during the week, Waterman still expects Essendon to bring their best on the weekend.  

“Every team we come up against, we expect them at their best,” Waterman said.

“We know what Essendon have gone through, we’ve gone through similar stuff in the past where you’re up against it, your key players are injured, and you might have just lost your coach.

“But, as we’ve seen with Carlton, the way they’ve come out the last couple of weeks, you can’t wright anyone off these days.

“It’s the way you rock up, and your mindset and your attitude, and we’ve spoken about it briefly as a team, that we’re building our identity and our form of the back of doing the hard stuff right, so that doesn’t change this week.

“We’re expecting the Bombers at their best, they’ve still got some bloody good players in their team so, I’m really excited about the opportunity to play them on the home deck.”

The Eagles will now spend the next four weeks in Perth, with back-to-back home games against the Dons and Port Adelaide, followed by an ‘away’ game against the Kangaroos at Optus Stadium, before heading into the bye.

“It will be good, we can get a bit of consistency with our routines,” Waterman said.

“I’m just excited to play in front of our home crowd, one won’t be a home game but will still have majority of our fans there.

“We can lay a bit of a footprint over the next few weeks going into the bye and hopefully attack the back end of the year with a lot of confidence.”